34. Widow Jane Distillery - Lisa Wicker Head Distiller

It's so fascinating. There's too much to know. That's the reason I trip up and hesitate about saying factual stuff about it because there's so much out there. In some places, we're still suffering from prohibition. That interruption of what was handed down and what was happening at the time. The fact that the craft distilling movement has just taken off in the last 10 years There's just so much more interest. And so there's still, I think the thing that surprises me the most, and there's still so many stones to be turned over, you know, with the history of distillation in the United States.

I tell you what, if you slipped up on here, one of our listeners will.

Oh, awesome. I look forward to it. I like the conversation.

They like to call us out quite often and say, hey, I think you guys slipped up here.

We don't get away with anything. And you know, that's good.

That means people are actually listening.

I'm going to fix it all here in a couple of weeks when we have Michael Veach on now. Oh, Michael fixes everything. Nobody's going to call him, I don't think. And he knows what he's talking about. We're just two guys drinking bourbon and two veterans, you know, just having fun.

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your host, Jim and Mike. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Log Heads Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Find out more about their fine rustic furniture at logheadshomecenter.com. Today we're at the Oscar Goetz Museum of Whiskey History in Bardstown, Kentucky. We thought that this would be the perfect place to sit down with Lisa Wicker of the Widow Jane Distillery. Lisa's the head distiller and blender for Widow Jane and she's brought a couple of their bourbon expressions for us to try today. And you can imagine how excited Mike and I were to find out that one of the bottles she's bringing is the Vaults. It's a 14-year-old bourbon that just released and with only 500 cases in existence, you know, we're feeling a bit lucky today. And we'll get on to the interview in a minute, but first I'd like to thank Linda and the team at the Oscar Getz Museum for hosting us today. If you haven't had a chance to visit the museum yet, you really need to put it on the list of things to do when you're in Bardstown. The Getz Museum has on display a 50-year collection of rare artifacts and documents all related to the American whiskey industry, dating all the way back from pre-colonial days up until post-prohibition years. Now, the museum includes exhibits on George Washington, Abraham Lincoln. They've got authentic moonshine stills, antique bottles and jugs. They've got advertising art and so much more. I'm telling you, there are dusty bourbon bottles everywhere. And if you're a big history buff who likes bourbon, then this place is a great time. And on December 14th from two to eight, they'll be participating in Bardstown's annual Christmas Tour of Homes. The museum will be dressed up for the holidays with Christmas trees and festive decorations. So be sure to stop by and enjoy some homemade refreshments and the gift shop will be open while you're there. Now, without any more delay, let's get on to our interview with Lisa. Hello everyone. I'm Jim Shannon.

I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is the Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, where are we? We're in the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History. This beautiful old building here, just filled with all kinds of bottles of bourbon and whiskey. And you'd be amazed. And the staff here has just been wonderful. They're going to let us record here today. It's awesome.

And who are we here with? Well, we've got Lisa Wicker with Widow Jane. Lisa, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm so excited. This room brings back some memories. Steven walked me in here the first time I was ever in here to show me some of his family history. And it's certainly a pinch me moment right now to be sitting here with you talking at Oscar Gets.

And they have it dressed up for the holidays too, don't they? It's gorgeous.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Well, we usually like to get straight to the first pour, the first whiskey. Awesome. So what do you have for us today?

Our flagship 10-year-old. Background on this, one of the reasons I was hired, I was originally hired with Widow Jane as a consultant. And one of my first projects I was tasked with was taking the Single barrel, 10 year old, single source and moving it to a multiple source. So it's Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky juice. They allowed me to pick how many barrels I wanted to blend. And so I picked five after lots of bench trials that seemed to be the one that was most, not necessarily consistent, but the easiest to handle. Also, you're not matching up barrel for barrel from the different sources. Their goal with that was that we didn't have to drop the 10 year age statement. That was really important to my bosses and to the company. And that's what I was tasked with. So keep that. So it varies a little bit, just like any kind of single barrel small batch. I have a lot of freedom with it. I always looking for some particular widow Jane notes, what we're known for dark stone fruits, baking spice. Outside of that, anything goes.

All right. Well, let's try it and see how close we come to it. Cheers. Cheers.

I blended all day in New York yesterday, so all of a sudden I'm looking for a spit jar. No, I can swallow this. That's good.

Yeah, you can. Now, speaking of that, you're a barstown girl, right?

I am. I'm a Bartstown transplant, but my soul was already here somehow when I showed up here. It's like, oh my gosh, I feel like I've lived here forever. I've been here nine years now. I moved here from southern Indiana when my youngest daughter graduated from high school. I was a commercial winemaker before I was a distiller.

Where was that at?

That was at Brown County, Indiana.

Oh yeah, the big wine country right there.

Yeah, actually, yeah, I'd known my boss for years. And there's a whole backstory on that and how I ended up working there. And I spent eight years there learning, you know, training to make wine. And like I said, when my youngest daughter, you know, it was time for her to graduate, one of the grape growers that we'd been purchasing grapes from was from the Marin County, Kentucky. And their family came up and they said, next year you can't buy grapes from us because we're going to start our own winery. And my boss offhandedly said, you need to hire Lisa. So I started with them as a consultant. And when she realized I was willing to move, they said, you know, can you come on as our winemaker? I said, without doing anything, I just said, yes. And her kitchen at her kitchen table.

Wow, there you go. Some of the great things like that will happen, right?

Yes. And that was in Calvary, Kentucky. And so we had to set up shop quickly and had a makeshift. We retrofitted a barn, trying to scramble and find some space. And things came on really fast. Meantime, built a winery. Part of the decision to come to Kentucky is I'd gotten the bug to distill. The man that trained me to make wine, I picked up a lot of whiskey drinking from him.

Oh, there you go.

Yes. And he would talk about distillation and certainly gave me the bug too. And so I thinking, good, if I go to Kentucky and build this winery, I can get a still and make some brandy. And so I wiggled my way on the legislative committee when I first got here. Needless to say, I met Steve Beam during the same time. He used to joke that I had a license in no building and he had a building in no license. He was still waiting on his DSP. We were at each other's extra set of hands. I started going down there once he did get his DSP in the evenings. you know, helping with fermentation and because that's always been my strong suit. And we started poking around with blending, which I found out to be very different than blending wine. And, you know, so that was part of my early education.

Well, I'll tell you what, I'd like to take a minute here with this tenure and talk a little bit about, you know, what we're getting on it. I think I'm impressed that it's got such a it's got it's got a big nose, but it's a very typical kind of a caramel vanilla

Some of the juice I inherited with this project was so substantial. And then some of the juice we've had to purchase, not had to, that we've chosen to purchase for this project, it didn't drink as bold as the age statement on it. And so we moved the barrels and moved them to rick houses that looked like they had more promise and they have delivered. So it's been a really interesting progression from Like I said, you know, whiskey that wasn't drinking as old as its age statement to some that's now seeming like it's exceeding its age statement.

So this is a blend of three different states, the youngest of which is 10 years. Correct. Okay. So Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

Got it. I get some floral notes on this. I think it's quite beautiful. You still get that spice on the back end.

I'd like to say I could almost pick one or two out of where it's from, but I'm not going to try. That would be disrespectful at this point.

No, please go. Please go. I was curious.

This is a 91 proof. I think it drinks like a 100 proof almost to me.

Yeah, it's a big whiskey. It's bold, and it's what we're looking for, actually. It's very widow Jane.

I'd call this my Merle Haggard. Why? So Jim blended a whiskey himself, and we were talking about it. And I said, I think we drank one whiskey. And I said, well, that's kind of a Johnny. His blend was a Johnny Cash, kick your stage lights out, because it had that punch in the back of the mouth and stuff. Love it. I just, you know, it's sometimes fun to say, hey, this is a Merle Haggard.

I like that. Give it a, yeah, give it a, everyone always says whiskey has a personality, but give it a personality. I think that's awesome.

Give it a person, right?

Give it a person and its personality. No, absolutely.

To me, bourbon and whiskey kind of go with country music.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I randomly picked this bottle and the batch. When Whiskey Advocate asked for the sample, and actually because I'm in New York, I was able to hand deliver it to the offices only. They don't let you see anyone. You have to go up through the back elevator and through the mail room and that sort of thing so they don't have a person associated necessarily with the sample. So this one, we scored a 90 with Whiskey Advocate. I was very pleased with that for randomly picking the bottle off of the retail shelf and taking it without trying to curate it or make sure that was what I considered the best of the best. And so it was nice for me just to be able to pick something blind and take it to them and still have a substantial score.

Congratulations.

That's a great score. That really is good. Oh, I haven't tasted yet. You've been nosing the whole time?

I've been nosing the whole time.

You've been drinking it, Mike? You know me.

I'm always over here drinking it.

Trying to play John Wayne over here.

Oh, that is, yeah. So now I've tasted it. That is full flavored. It is a little nutty. Yeah.

Yeah, we go through the pecan kind of spectrum sometimes. Sometimes we pick up some old leather, sometimes it's pecan. Yeah, we've got all kinds of things going on with it. Like I said, the baking spice is ultimately what I'm always looking for in every blend.

Now, I always say baking spice because I think about that flavor I'm getting. Is it more of a nutmeg or an allspice or a cinnamon? This is more of a nutmeg, I think.

I'd agree with that. That's pretty spot on.

I'm getting a little bit of something that Ryan here is contributing, a little bit of citrus. Not a lot, but just a hint of it.

That is common. Frequently lemon, sometimes bitter orange, sometimes just orange peel people come up with. I also encourage everybody to taste all of those things. It's like, okay, we think we all know what nutmeg tastes like, right? Because we've had it sprinkled on our eggnog or whatever. But I encourage people to actually go to your spice cabinet and taste this stuff raw. Because without sugar in it, you'll get some crazy, more of a bark kind of wood kind of note to some of those spices. Because you know, cinnamon's bark, right? Nutmeg's a little round nut thing. But without sugar, it is a completely different, gosh, I'm struggling for the word, spectrum of taste, I guess, for lack of a better phrase than you do with everything sweetened.

Yeah, same with cocoa powder, right? Absolutely. It's just totally different.

Absolutely.

You add a little sugar to it, you get chocolate.

Right. And so some of those flavors change so dramatically with sugar added to them. And they might be a little bit more bitter or pungent or whatever. But I encourage everybody to taste all that stuff raw.

So what is the batch size of the Widow Jane tenure?

Five barrels. We went through a big spectrum of whether we're going to do two, well we couldn't do two because we had three stays, three, five, seven, as many as 20. And bench trial after bench trial, five was easier for me to control. And Anyway, we were able to come up with it works for our production area size. We are two buildings. We've got the distillery building, which also houses the retail space. But then literally across our cobblestone street, we have our warehouse. And that's where we receive all of our barrels that are obviously stored off of site. Everything that we store on site, we are producing on site there. But space is a little bit at a limit. And so even the five barrels, as you're looking at a product, you're looking at even the production space that it's going to take and and your manpower and can one guy dump all these barrels right and get them blended and you know can we how many can we give those can we move through a week and so this lent itself this one was this was the most successful.

So do you feel like them I realize that you've chosen five barrels out of a sort of a logistical kind of thing right but do you feel that the larger batch size get the easier it becomes?

No, absolutely not. We'll talk about that with the vaults. The vaults was 20 barrels, 21 barrels. And no, it doesn't get any easier, especially when you're a control freak. And you're trying to put these things together. Because what's happening is when you're blending, especially with all of these barrels, all the barrels, you're not absolutely sure what they're going to yield. So you're sitting at your desk, and you can always make a beautiful blend. But Do we know how many gallons are in this barrel? And how is that proportion going to happen when we combine them? We can't just dump them together. So I have the most amazing warehouse manager. We're very fortunate. He's got an amazing palette. I can trust him. And he also can tell me. And he'll write on my samples. He'll say, this barrel's a little bit lower. And I know what lower means now, especially with the different states. A lower from Indiana might not equal a lower from Tennessee. So we know now that barrels, I know on average, is going to 27, 29 gallons, or this other state's going to yield about 34. I'm able to break the proportions down. Then he goes ahead and blends them and brings me back a 200 milliliter sample. I do taste it after it's been blended and proved to be sure that we're spot on.

It's good to have somebody like that, isn't it?

It's wonderful. I have amazing staff. My staff is phenomenal. I inherited most of them, the people that we've hired since I've been there. The other day, it was so nice. I had a call with a project that we're working on. Everybody was working, but there was so much laughter. And we've got a couple of distillery dogs and they're barking and people are laughing, but we're getting work done, right? And so it's such a wonderful family, widow Jane family.

So do the distillery dogs chase the distillery cats?

We don't have a distillery cat.

Oh, you don't?

No, we did for a while when I first got there and everybody felt so bad for the cat because she was so lonely in the warehouse and everything. And so we found her another home. So, yes. And so we have dogs now. We also have some chickens. We have chickens. We have a courtyard. So, you know, you look at my from where my desk is and where my blending table is. And I look out over a courtyard with a tree in it and chicken. So, you know, it's like, is it Kentucky or is it New York? Right.

Let's get into the history of Widow Jane. Tell us how Widow Jane started and the history of it.

Widow Jane, we just celebrated our seventh anniversary. It was founded by a man that originally had been in the chocolate business, and they were manufacturing chocolate in the building. He decided to get into I tell people when you start a craft distillery, there's two ways for cash flow. You either make white spirits and do it and release those or you source whiskey because putting down barrels is a reverse pyramid scheme. All your money just keeps building out the door rather than until you start to release it and turn the tide the other way. Anyway, he had Source Whiskey and they had excellent Source Whiskey. They came out of the out of gate strong. He was a colorful character and there's lots of stories there. Samson and Suri bought them three years ago. They're seven years old. Samson and Suri is the parent group they own. In our portfolio, we have few spirits in Evanston, few bourbon and few rye. We have Philadelphia Blue Coat Gin, which is Philadelphia Distilling. We have Bren Frenchmalt to Allison Park and her product. It's fabulous stuff. We have a mezcal plant in Oaxaca, Mexico for mezcal vago. It's a beautiful family to be in. I'm tasked with some really crazy, interesting things and, you know, I like to be pushed and I get pushed hard and treated very kindly.

So do you guys have, do you personally have a lot of interaction with the other business divisions of this company?

We do, but they're committed to keeping us independent of one another. We all have our own identities. We all have our own way of operating our businesses. What it does provide for us is a unified sales team, unified advocacy. It's helpful in some of our raw materials and that sort of thing too.

So are you able to pick up the phone and call one of the other head distillers and say, Hey, I'm seeing this over here. Have you ever seen anything like this?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that part's great because it's still in the family, right? You know, so you're not hanging out your dirty laundry. somebody else to see or your positive things, you know, get so fired up about something that you're doing and it's not time for the general public to know. And we've got other people, you know, in the, um, and there's just that general camaraderie as well, you know, but no, it's no, we absolutely Paul Heltko from, you know, if you pick up the phone sometimes or send me a text message, you know, out of the blue about something and no, it's, it's lovely. And Steven, their head distiller, the same thing, or, you know, the, the Philadelphia team. Um, I had to be down there recently for, um, some, um, What was I down there for this last time? I can't remember, but you know, one of the guys there, I barely walked through the door. I haven't seen him in a few months and he just catches me out of the corner of his eye and he picks up a glass and he goes, Hey, taste this. Like I had never, you know, never been away from there. So it's, um, yeah, it's nice. It's nice not to be the lone ranger. You know, it's that, that part's really helpful.

So with that distillery being right there in Brooklyn, where do you source your water from when you're producing stuff?

We use domestic water for mashing. New York's known for its water. That's the reason the bagels and the pizza crust are sought after because, oddly enough, the New York municipal water is really highly rated. Of course, the first thing I do when I start on a project is have all the water tested. It came back beautifully. We do, of course, run it through some carbon filtration, but it's beautiful water. Our water for our proofing, the barrels that we produce in New York and the liquid that we blend, we proof it down with water from Rosendale Mines in Rosendale, New York. That's where the Widow Jane name came from. There was some controversy about that with the previous ownership, but Widow Jane is some of the local folklore in Rosendale. There's different stories about Jane and the widow and Mr. Snyder that owned the mines originally, and everybody's got their own version, but Widow Jane was certainly a presence in Rosendale. We source our water from the Rosendale mines. The mines were mined for lime that was then heated. You'll see these ovens that were carved out of the side of the hillsides there. They heated that and it was clinker. The clinker was a hardening edge. There's probably some construction people rolling over right now going, oh my God, she's got all of them.

No, I think you got it pretty good. Okay.

And so this clinker is a hardening agent before Portland Cement, right? So they put it in, but that clinker in that cement is holding together, you know, the Statue of Liberty, the White House, the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central Station, and that water is delicious. It is so good. I actually broke down the mineral recipe on it and it is so beautiful. Think of the best mineral water you've ever had that's really that crispness to it, that minerality to it. Not unlike crisp white wine that's got a lot of minerality to it. It's that same sort of flavor profile on it.

So the primary role of this is as a proofing water.

Yeah, and that's something that brings, when you're making, doing a blended whiskey, or even when they were doing it in a single barrel, that certainly sets us apart because that minerality brings so much to cutting it. It is a production problem, but we have mastered how to keep it, we don't chill filter, but we've mastered how to keep it polished now without the mineral water causing some havoc.

Right, I can imagine, yeah. But, you know, it brings so much to the table, right? I mean, it brings so much to the table.

Oh, it's worth the effort. Some days it doesn't feel like it. I was like, oh my gosh, if we were just cutting this with our own water or something, my life would be easier. But ultimately, that's where you get the trade off, right? The work produces something that's beautiful and different.

You have distillation operations going on in Brooklyn. You've got some custom distillation taking place in Kentucky. You're also sourcing barrels. So you got a lot going on.

We got a lot going on. You got a lot going on.

But I mean, I guess in the second half, we're probably going to get to talking about kind of where does all that lead, you know, with the future of Widow Jane. But specifically about the heirloom corn, you have, an expression that you make called baby Jane. Can you talk a little bit about that? We don't have a sample today, but I'd like to know a little bit about it.

No, I'm sorry. I didn't bring that. Yeah, the baby Jane is just the bourbon made with baby Jane.

And this is 100% you, right? In-house.

And with the barrels that were laying down in Kentucky as well, because everybody's like, is that going to replace your tenure?

Who knows?

You got to sit and wait on it so I don't know. Those are talks that happen all the time. The distillery here was Castle & Key by Bosses. At first, it's like, do we let people know? Do we talk about it? And then we had nine women from Kentucky on a tour and went to Jane and they're like, oh, we decided to come here because we saw all your barrels at Castle & Key.

Yeah, I have to tell you, I was at Castle & Key and walking between the buildings on a tour and I'm watching the Widow Jane barrels roll across the road there.

Yeah, there's no secrets in this business. And I'm going to put one note in too about the barrels. The barrels come from Zach Coopridge in Athertonville, Kentucky. In fact, you know what? On my way over here today, I thought, you know what? We should have made this a driving tour.

Oh, wow.

because there's so many places. So up in Athertonville, it's at Cooperage. It was started by Bert Zeimlich. He had been running the Brown Forum in Cooperage and started this Cooperage. And then they were raising barrels for one of the larger distilleries. I won't name it, but the contract got cut. I was the first large order after all of that had happened. And we have We have our own Widow Jane finish from there. Running the plant now are Bruce and Zach Seimlich, the son and the grandson now. It's a remarkable place to visit. They don't have any tours per se. It was an old Seagrams plant that was abandoned in The history there is so old, and I'm not going to try to go too far into this. But when I was working for Steve Beam, he had uncovered the fact that Abraham Lincoln's father had worked at that distillery for one of Steve's ancestors. Wow. Yeah, because it's just down the road from Lincoln's boyhood home, because it's between Hodginville and Athertonville. And so there's so much history there, and you feel it when you get on site there. But then it was the Seagrams plant that went out of business, and they took it over for the Cooperage years ago.

So Lisa, we were talking earlier about your past and how you got from a winery to Kentucky and you're here, you're learning to drink whiskey. And how did you get, take me from that point on to widow Jane, I guess.

Oh, yeah. As I said earlier, the winery that I built, the couple went through a divorce and I saw that was happening. And so I had booked a ticket to Northern Sonoma. I'm like, oh, this is Kentucky. And I thought, well, I'm going to have to because of the timetable with grape harvest and everything was like, I've got to work quickly. It was in the spring, late spring. And so I booked this ticket. I think I'm going to have to go out there to this actually, you It was to a rosé festival, but it was up in northern Sonoma where it's really rustic and rural. I thought, I'm just going to have to go from winery to winery and see if I can work harvest there somewhere, and then regroup and come back to Kentucky and try to start over in Kentucky again. Because I'd already been working in the evenings with Steve Beam, the day after I resigned the winery, Um, Paul and Steve beam took me to dinner and hired me full time. It brought me on. So I got it. Yes. I got into distilling cause I, you know, I knew both of them. And like I said, had been in the distillery frequently. Um, and so I got into distilling a lot faster and I didn't look back. I mean, it, as much as I love, I thought winemaking was the best job in the whole world. And so I started distilling and I was mistaken. Distilling is the best job in the whole world.

Wow. So you get into stealing and that's it. Limestone.

Yes, we did a lot of client work. We actually had a client overlap because I had already started making some brandy bases. I'd been making some fruit wines as brandy bases that we were transferring to the distillery to distill. That project was already on deck and that's the reason they brought me in for that project. It was actually tied to one of the television shows. Steve was doing a lot of client work in addition to laying his own stuff down. The client work took up so much of our time. That's what I ended up falling into mostly was research and development on client projects. Steve was great in the fact that he trusted me. would let me just run with it. And so we were able to put some things in production and improve what we thought originally was getting proposed to us. And so we were doing that, obviously laying down as much of our own product as we could during that time. So it was chaotic and crazy and 65 to 80 hour weeks. I like to tell a story on Steve. The last time the latest I've ever turned down a turnoff is still was 2.45 in the morning. And I'd gotten my plastic Adirondack chair from outside. And I had my blanket and my pillow for my truck. And I'm sitting there with my alarm on every 15 minutes to wake back up and make sure I didn't fall asleep. And I get texts from Steve and he's like, are you okay? There was a flash in the sky. I'm like, if there was a flash in the sky, I'm certain.

You'll be answering that phone, right?

Answering your text message. But yes, I'm like, no, I've not blown up your distillery. So anyway, so there was just crazy times during that time. And we accomplished a lot. It was, like I said, just crazy times. But Luxco purchased them, and I was fired in that purchase. And quite fairly, you know, it's one of those things like, you know, it's the proverbial best thing that ever happened. It didn't seem like it at the time. I thought, oh my gosh, am I going to have to go back to winemaking? Not that that was, you know, the worst worst case scenario. But at the same time, I'm like, I love distilling so much and I just gotten enough of it under my belt to know that's exactly what I should be doing. And they But if I purchased 50% of a business, I wouldn't want two people from the other company at the top. So that worked out OK. And I immediately had an offer, because this is like when craft distilling is exploding. When I started distilling with Steve, there were 250 craft distilleries. It's 10 times that now. There's 2,500 craft distilleries now. Dave Sherrick had been working with a project in South Carolina. So they interviewed me immediately, offered me a full-time job. I wasn't willing to move to South Carolina only because there was too much for me to learn here in Kentucky. I was like, I'm not ready for that yet. And so they countered with consulting. So I consulted for them in Palmetto Distillery down in in South Carolina. Palmetto moonshine, those guys are awesome. They're just a tremendous group of people.

Oh, those two are so much fun.

I'm going to jump forward to when I was distilling at Starlight one day that one of the women runs up the hill. She goes, there are two guys here in a Cadillac with horns on it and they're way too young to be driving it. Oh my gosh, Trey and Brian are here. That's awesome. So anyway, so I did that. But then Ted Huber found out that I was on the market and Ted as Huber Orchard & Winery, they've been making wine forever. And so we'd known each other for my wine making years. So he'd added a grain to story. I did not know that he had done that. And so he and Dana had another offer from a very well-known very well known distillery and it was on the table. I was getting ready to accept it and Ted said, please don't do that until I talk to you. Well, there's a snowstorm and it's like on a Thursday, I'm supposed to talk to Ted and I'm going to accept this offer on a Friday. And he's like, can you just extend it a little bit? I said, yes. And so I thought, okay. And I was pretty pretty sure, I mean, you know, 95% sure I was going to accept this other offer. And I thought, well, as a professional courtesy, I'll talk to Ted and Dana and And I went and he knocked everything out of the park, not just monetarily, but with what was going to happen and what I was going to be able to do there and what the distillery, how the distillery was laid out. And I thought this is more traditional distilling and this is what I really want to do. I thought I'd be there forever. They're tremendous people and it's a tremendous project.

It's nice to be wanted, right?

It's nice. Yeah, you know, as long, you know, as long as you like you know, what am I trying to say? Just, just work hard and stay in the right place. The, the industry has grown so dramatically, you know, there's, there's just lots of demand right now.

It makes it sound, you sound, sound like you show up early and you leave late. So that in this, I guess it's newer generation that's lacking, right? You know, and people want that. They want somebody that's going to be dedicated and loyal to their brand.

Yes. It's hard for me to say that because I don't see that lacking. I have three grown children that work themselves crazy and they're successful, but part of it is because they go to work early and they stay late. It's certainly not me necessarily, but as a family trait that I inherited from my parents and certainly I see it in my sisters and their children. That's the way we were raised.

Let's talk about that, your raisings and stuff. When's your first sip of bourbon or whiskey?

Oh my gosh, it had to be Jack Daniels in college. Jack Daniels in college. Way too much.

You know some people would say that's not bourbon, that's just whiskey.

Yeah, I know, I know. You're right, exactly. And so whiskey, then I had my kids who were moving a lot, and quite frankly, I had some health issues and I didn't drink a lot. And as I was able to get all those, you know, taken care of and the kids got a little bit older. And certainly when I started making wine, you know, and the winemaker that trained me was a bourbon guy, right? And so, and then my daughter had met her future husband at the time and he was a Kentucky boy. And So, his family, his father as well, educated me tremendously and he still does. He's awesome. He sends me all these obscure bourbon articles that are really tremendous articles that I would miss, right? So, Pat's always sending me these amazing things. So, it's actually been relatively recently in the last two decades that whiskey's become first for recreational And then I've also discovered early on that when I was making wine, the winemaker that trained me gave me the best advice I've ever had. It's like, don't just drink your own juice. You're going to start to like it. And so part of his thing about drinking whiskey was it wasn't wine. So if you're blending wine all day, it was a chance for your brain to shift gears and not just get house palate.

So besides widow Jane, you know, if you're sitting at home at night and you say I want a bourbon, what else do you got on your shelf?

Oh my gosh. It's on the shelf. It's on the floor. It's on the sideboard. It's on the side table. It's in the kitchen. It's in on the little table when you come into the entryway. There are several bottles in my bedroom.

So what else do you have? Like, what else are you drinking?

Oh my gosh, it, you know, I go on different tears sometimes for different distilleries. So like, I'll get on one of the major distilleries and then like for like three weeks or so just keep tasting all the stuff that they put out, you know, part of it is just, you know, if it's recreational, it's one thing I'll, I'll drink whatever anybody's pouring for me, you know, and enjoy it.

Free bourbon is the best.

Yeah, free bourbon is the best. But as far as trying to develop my palate, because I'm still on the edge of all that, even though I'm doing this. And it's the same thing, trying not to keep house palate. So I'll go through a heaven hell tear, and then I'll go through a wild turkey tear, and then I'll go through, think that my makers is always on the shelf because of the family connection there. But Four Roses has always been a staple. You know, like the four rows of single barrels, always a fallback Tuesday night for me. You know, I always know it's going to be dependable. It's always going to be a little bit different. Oh, my gosh. We should walk over to my house. When the weather's warm, you have an invitation to come back and we'll sit in the rocking chairs on my front porch and you guys can dig through my piles of whiskey. Yeah. I would love for you to do that. There's been several people on my front porch. Everything from the farmer to the coopers and certainly something that's fun in Bardstown.

They all make great juice. It's great to sit around and appreciate all of it, right? Yes. It's good. I agree. I've heard from many distillers about house palette and how it can really get you tunnel vision.

Yes, it can. It can. And, you know, so I'm really aware of that.

I'd say you, I'd ask you what you thought about the bourbon culture, but I can see that you're well ingrained and deep and trenched inside the bourbon culture and believe in what it brings to America. And I'd say you got a very extensive bourbon road. Well, Jim, let's take a quick break. You think, and then we'll get into the vaults in your limited releases and we'll go ahead and drink this second pour. What do you say? Sounds good.

We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Loghead's Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Loghead's Home Center, nestled in the hills of Kentucky, is an industry leader in building handcrafted rustic furniture. Family-owned and operated, they take pride in offering only the very best for their customers. The Logheads, and that's what they like to call themselves, are skilled woodcrafters who are passionate about creating rustic furniture for people who appreciate the beauty of natural wood. Owners Tommy and Gwen don't just sell the rustic lifestyle, they live it. And you can be sure that Loghead's furniture will always be handcrafted in Kentucky by artisans who embrace the simple way of life. Log Heads rustic furniture is made from northern white cedar, a sustainable wood that's naturally rot and termite resistant. Its beauty and quality will add warmth to your earthy lifestyle for generations to come. Be sure to check out everything they have to offer at logheadshomescenter.com. And while you're at it, give Tommy and Gwen a shout on Facebook or Instagram at Log Heads Home Center. Okay, we are back and Lisa, what do you have for us for the second pour?

Um, our recently released vaults, um, it is 14 and 15 year old juice. Of course it says reflected with a 14 year old. Um, it is, um, Indiana and Tennessee, and it is a project that I've been working on for several months trying to decide what we're going to do. And, and, you know, maybe possibly the first in a series, but, um, um, Yeah, it's been a labor of love for sure. It's the oldest juice I've ever had the privilege of working with. That part was a little bit nerve wracking, but I think we came up with a pretty decent balanced blend. There's certainly a story behind it, but I'd like everybody to taste it first before I go into what the background is in it, because there's a little bit of a down the road secret here that I'm going to reveal. Oh, breaking news on the Bourbon Road. I may actually say it on the back label. We can add a little intrigue, right?

Let's taste this. Cheers, guys. Cheers. Wow, that's pretty amazing. I thought it was going to have a lot more bite on the back end, but you're... 99 proof.

Wow, I like that. Yeah, that is 99 proof, so you're proofing this down to just under 100. What kind of proof are you dealing with on the original barrels?

Oh my gosh, they've been varying dramatically. They've come in as low as, oh gosh, under 110 to as high as 129, 134. Wow. Yeah, so it's been all over the map. It's really interesting.

So you said that before that this blend was 20 total barrels, right?

Correct. I said 20 and I'm scratching my head going, I'm the person that did this and was it 20 or 21? I can't remember. Yeah, I think it's 20.

And how long does a process like that take?

This one took a lot longer than it should have, because you're in a new environment. Because of the situation with the layout of the current building that we're in, I have to blend at my desk, which is bled over into another desk. My staff is really patient because I've got whiskey bottles everywhere. You have to pull the barrels in. You have to start sampling barrels across. You request samples from the original places where things are stored. Because you have to keep tasting and tasting, so you start to develop what the profile is going to be coming out of those barrels. Otherwise, you get a sample from maybe one, three barrels, and you're like, okay, well, this one tastes like this, this one tastes like this. But if I'm getting a lot of 10 of these barrels or 14 of these barrels in or 30 of these barrels in, You want to taste across as many of them as you can, so you start to have in your head what the basic flavor profile is on them. The actual process of blending, I'm at a point where I do 200 milliliters samples, but you're even shifting things just maybe two milliliters at a time, three milliliters at a time. And then you keep trying to reproduce that. My bosses have gotten used to me like reproducing things kind of on site. I mean, they do better after they've had a chance to sit for a few days and the blend come together. But they also have been used to me just pulling things and blending it because I want to be sure that I can recreate it. It's so easy to make a really one bottle of something absolutely beautiful. to be able to extend that, especially in a craft distillery setting, because we don't have a formal lab. We have a little bit of a lab that we use for testing our mash and doing our proofing and things on spirits. But we don't have the space for a formal blending lab. So I just want to be able to be sure that I can always keep pulling it out and pulling it out and pulling it out. So literally when we got towards the end of this project and it was getting ready to go in the bottle, we split it up into three different tanks, stainless steel tanks. And I quite literally, because each tank varied just a little bit, I just couldn't let it go to bottle like by bottling the first, even though it was the same blend, right? But I couldn't let it go to bottle by bottling one tank and then the next tank and then the next tank. I literally was in there pulling two barrels out at a time and making 55 gallon blends to send to the bottling team. So we did this. It was a labor of love and pretty laborious. The whole team participated in pulling this project off. We are not heated or cooled at Red Hook, so the environment can be a challenge. And we had a little bit of a heat spike during this project. And the team hung in there with me. And when the temperature broke and it was time to go to bottle, they were very generous and did a double shift on bottling one day and a single shift on another to get everything into the bottle and keep the quality on it that we wanted.

I'll tell you, this has, to me, is like vanilla caramel. Maybe some, you got some fruit in there?

Yes.

So, you know me, I'm always coming out with these crazy, picking out these crazy notes, only because I get a flash or an image in my mind when I nose it. Usually when I nose it, I get this image and then I taste it if it's confirmed. I get like a little bit of, Minty root beer.

Yes, that's it. No, really? You're kidding me. My tasting notes say wintergreen. I did not put root beer down. I put sassafras. I grew up with southern Indiana. Sassafras is the thing. Sassafras tea, sassafras bark. And sassafras is one of the barks they use in root beer.

Doesn't that have arsenic in it?

Yeah, maybe.

I grew up drinking that same Sassafras tea as a kid. Yes, my grandmother used to brew it. We would chop that root and soak Sassafras, that root in there, you know, you peel the root back and then you soak it and get that, add that sugar and you get you some good, that cheap root beer, I guess.

I mean, they're not the dominant notes. Obviously, Mike, you call out the dominant notes, I believe, but I was just picking that up and I got that image in my mind. I got this A&W root beer kind of. Yes. And it's confirmed on the palate, but it's a little more buttery and savory, I think. You may tell you what I really get.

I get a caramel candied apple with a little bit of hot fudge in there. That's what I really do get.

I hear cocoa a lot. Cocoa powder, I hear that a lot.

You know that hot fudge I think you pour on like an ice cream sundae. I don't know.

I'll take it.

But then Jen says root beer and I'm like, maybe.

The wintergreen note too, there's something in not all old whiskeys, but when you have the privilege to taste something that's really, really old, some of them come up with that menthol quality. And I have been on a tear trying to figure out where does that menthol come from? Is it because Is there something that develops in it after because it's just been sitting in the bottle for three decades or five decades or whatever? Was it something in the wood? It's obvious when you look at cross-section of oak these days, it's not the same cross-section of oak that the old whiskey was barreled in because the rings are a lot looser than they used to be. And so it's like, is that where that comes from? Is there something different with the grain, the yeast? But this time, I didn't hit the menthol, but I hit this wintergreen note. And I stuck with that one because I was like, oh my gosh, I had some that did not have it. And root beer and wintergreen don't sound like they, you know, I was like, that's kind of conflicting.

Our friends at the Bourbon Lens would, they'd laugh at this, but whore hound. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's a mint candy. Yeah. It's an herbal candy.

Yeah.

My grandfather used to keep those in a jar on a cabinet.

We had these young guys, they have another podcast with some friends of ours and called the Bourbon Lens and one of them, we said whore hound and they're like, What's that? We've never seen that. What is a whorehound? We're trying to explain it to him.

Yeah, it's an herb that they make into herbal candy.

If you shop for half of what you own at Tractor Supply, Rural King and Tractor Supply. There's our shout out to you. I love the Rural King candy selection at the checkout. You know, I have to say though, there's something that happens in my palate whenever I have a bourbon that kind of, it kind of rounds the sides of my tongue and I get that little bit of a savory buttery note and it kind of turns on my saliva falls, you know, and my mouth just waters. I don't drool, Mike, like you said, but that's a, it's a, it's a, it's an imagery thing.

I tried to run a blog.

That's what bandanas are for, right?

Well, I said, you know, I can taste, I can feel my mouth watering, right? But I can't look at another person and say that person's mouth is watering, but I can see Jim over there looking at a bourbon and just drool coming out and somebody explains it like a dog.

I didn't like that imagery, so I cut it out of the blog. Yeah, so this is a powerful flavor.

It's interesting too because it'll continue, even though we've had it poured for a little bit, it'll continue to open up. I'm working on a project and we're on our 175th batch of small batch and so I don't get the luxury of doing this all the time anymore. But when I get to the final blend, I'll pour glasses and put a watch glass on the top of it to, you know, to seal it off and then kind of revisit those during the day and even into the next day sometimes. Um, and this one will continue to open up and evolve. It's been really interesting. Um, you know, what flavors come forward and then they fall off and then something else comes forward. But you know, we've got a lot of broken, broken in leather kind of things sometimes, especially if it's had an opportunity to sit for a little bit.

I'm getting the leather tobacco. One of the things I noticed between the 10 year old and this one is a similarity that they both have the kind of this mineral. Is it coming from the water?

It's coming from the water.

Okay. So yeah, they both have this kind of mineral note to it and it's a good, it's almost like a Burton salt kind of thing. Yes. I don't know. It's.

So my secret that's on the label here is Sack Cooperage that I spoke about earlier down the road here in Athertonville. We were having a conversation and they said offhandedly, we have some wood that's eight-year-old air-seasoned wood. I'm like, excuse me.

Eight years, that's a long time, right?

Eight years is a long time. Yeah, two and four years. It's like even a luxury. And I like, oh my gosh. I said, please race. I said, we have this little thing that we can call hamburgers. So if there's a stave that they tell me about or something, I have them cut them into blocks and then toast them or char them or whatever. And sometimes I have the boxes on my front porch here or whatever. And so I can use those and kind of do some preliminary testing on what kind of flavors that the whiskey is going to draw out of those pretty relatively quickly. And so they had done that, and they'd done it with the eight-year-old. And it's like, oh my gosh. Within a day or two, it's like, holy cow, because there's no tannin left in it. It's a different. It's certainly oak. It's certainly the heiressies and oak that were used to those flavors in whiskey. But there's just no grape stem green tannins left in it at all. It's campfire. The wood was so brittle. I'm all about 53 gallons. people that know me know I'm not a small, small barrel person. And, um, but they couldn't, it was too brittle to raise 53s. And since we were just finishing in those, they were able to raise thirties. And so we brought those to New York.

Are we talking about a gray oak, sort of a gray barrel?

It's gray. Oh, it's very gray.

It's looking like a piece of old barnwood.

It looks like a piece of old barnwood. And it's just so beautiful. I mean, and after they had, um, you know, finished them on inside, you take that bung out. It is just spectacular. It's like the best piece of firewood smell that you've ever smelled in your entire life. It's awesome. And so we have part, not all of it, but we barrel part of it partially in those barrels to bring some of those notes out in the 14th of

Do you have a lot of loss in those barrels?

No, we didn't because they're new barrels. They're an excellent cupridge and the cupridge is tight. We don't have any loss. It certainly absorbs some of the whiskey, but we don't have any loss through the barrel itself.

What else do you have coming up like limited releases? Are you going to have a weeded bourbon?

It's not in the plans right now. I have been running all kinds of different ryes though and I've run some weeded rye and it is amazing. It's absolutely delicious. It's my favorite of all the ryes that we've run so well. I do like 95% malted ryes. Last year, because of inheriting the project and getting everything back up and running in New York and producing a lot more whiskey than they had been, we ran out of the corn last year until we had, you know, until we had the new crop. And so we ran quite a bit of rye during that, during that time and did all kinds of experimental rye bells.

Talk about doing any like single bonds or anything like that.

Oh, I will. I mean, not as maybe not as like a outside of the distillery kind of release, you know, my bosses may fall over dead hearing me say this, but they know this already. It's like, we will be making some single malt. The American Single Malt Commission, I believe in what they're doing.

Some people say that's the next up and coming thing.

I hear that a lot because it's fun to make. It's fun to drink. There's a lot of room in the market for American malts.

And there are some areas of the country that it's very popular. Very popular.

Yes. And the fortunate thing for the whole industry is that the American Malt Commission, the people that are participating in that are following all the quote unquote rules in it. And they're turning out some really high quality malt.

And that's obviously the driver behind all of it, if it had been all poor.

Poor, poor examples of malt. You know, nobody would give it the time of day, but fortunately, um, the people that have come out of the gate strong with it are making some really fabulous juice.

And so what do you, what do you see widow Jane in the future? Like, what do you, what do you foresee as far as like, releases coming out, maybe some older juice or your guys' own juice. What's your age going to be?

Yeah. Our goal right now is to repatriate everything to New York. New York has an old distilling tradition. I spent a little bit of time in the New York Historical Society looking up the distillation history, especially particularly in Brooklyn. And it's amazing how much grain distill was being made. There's still a huge mill there, an enormous mill. It's been abandoned, but it was only feeding the brewing and distilling industry at one point. It's actually in our sightline from down the street from where we are, but so much rum was being made there. It's a port and molasses was coming in. But like I said, the distillation history is really, really rich there. But that's our ultimate goal is to get everything repatriated, meaning the corn growing is going to happen there. And everybody here is aware that that's going to shift. Of course, we'll keep Zach Cooperidge, but outside of that, that everything else will be repatriated to New York. There's some New York cooperages that are doing some amazing, beautifully, wonderful barrels, but they're not at the scale that we need right now. So I use those for some specialty projects that I'm working on, some R&D stuff, but made with New York oak, New York cooper, Adirondack wood, and it's absolutely fabulous stuff. And so another cooperage, they're only raising small barrels. And I told them, I said, if you start raising some 53s, I'm going to buy your first 353s, because I do want to incorporate some New York cooperages as well.

I think it's pretty amazing that you're like all over the place and you say you talk about George Washington's distillery and stuff. And, you know, we last couple of weeks, we've talked about whiskey and history and whiskey in the military and old George, man, he, he, uh, that's, that's the way they said he survived Valley Forge that winter there and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania was whiskey and who knows where that came from. Did it come from his distillery? It came somewhere from the East coast though.

Yeah, he wasn't distilling at the time. Steve Bayshore is the guy, he's the director of trades at Mount Vernon and over the distillation. He's the head distiller and master miller. Washington didn't start distilling until after the war because he had James Anderson, he had a Scottish foreman that had written him and said, I'd like to be I'm going to get all the terms wrong, the foreman of your farms and work in the mill. And so he gets there and he's like, you're milling all this grain already. You might as well make some whiskey out of it. And so it was just a few years before Washington's death. I hope I don't get all of this incorrect. Washington's death, but there was a year that they produced with these five little stills, 11,000 gallons.

Isn't that how they got rid of their grain? They had leftover grain that they didn't make bread with, right? So they had to... Well, that's sort of the history of distilling.

I mean, you look at Maker's Mark and, you know, that was Berkspring's mill, right? Because there was a grist mill there first. And that's, you know, there are some, some people that I've spoken to and Steve's one of them that, you know, they believe that maybe Miller's wives were the first people that were writing down mash bills because they would get a regular amounts of grain and in order to keep, you know, cause distilling was hearth work. It was women's work. You know, so you're cooking and you're going to be cooking the mash and you're going to be distilling as well because it was just Becky, Becky Harris from Catoctin Creek said something amazing a couple of weeks ago. She goes, you know, if, if laundry was artisanal men, men may be doing the laundry too, right?

That's what I did yesterday.

I told Becky, I said, oh my gosh. I said, I think you just brought the house out of all the things, 11 distillers on this panel. And I think you just nailed it. But I think traditionally, like I said, distillation was women's work because you had fruit that was going bad. You'd ferment it and distill it. If you had grain, that's the only way you could keep it. You also were producing your own cash for barter. So you had a little bit of you know, money to burn as well, but also as a way to keep, make medicine, um, keep your grain from going bad, you know, um, whiskey was currency, right? I mean, whiskey was currency. You know, we have evidence of that here in Bartstown, you know, it's, um, you know, when there's the, when, you know, people were out and expanding the country and there wasn't paper currency to be had, you know, you, you, you could make whiskey and you had currency.

They'd trade whiskey sometimes to frontiersmen for their pelts. Companies like the Hudson Bay Company of New York, they would trade their whiskey for pelts to the frontiersmen and they'd go off and drink a little whiskey.

Right. And if you didn't drink it, you had it to trade off again, right? To, you know, for something else that you needed. So yeah, it's, it's pretty phenomenal. And, and, you know, so you start tracing through that and you realize, but, but like I said, there's some historians that believe that maybe Miller's wives were the first ones that were writing down some of those recipes. I think T.W.

Samuel's here and right here in this barstown area. That's how he, he had, he was a Miller to start out with. And then he was like, I got all this leftover grain. I need to get rid of it before it spoils. And, um,

Yeah, because people paid the miller in grain.

Yeah.

You know, they would, they would pay them and more grain and yeah, you know, you got up to your eyeballs. Might as well make some whiskey.

That's not a bad way to. Yeah, absolutely.

A little bit of bread, a little bit of whiskey, you're good to go. Thank you T.W.

Samuels for coming out with some so good stuff.

Yeah. It's so fascinating. There's too much to know. That's the reason I trip up and hesitate about saying factual stuff about it because there's so much out there. In some places, we're still suffering from prohibition. That interruption of what was handed down and what was happening at the time. The fact that the craft distilling movement has just taken off in the last 10 years there's just so much more interest. And so there's still, I think the thing that surprises me the most, and there's still so many stones to be turned over, you know, with the history of distillation in the United States.

I tell you what, if you slipped up on here, one of our listeners will... Oh, awesome.

I look forward to it. I like the conversation.

They like to call us out quite often and say, hey, I think you guys slipped up here.

We don't get away with anything. And you know, that's good.

That means people are actually listening.

I'm going to fix it all here in a couple of weeks when we have Michael Veech on though. Michael fixes everything. I don't think, and he knows what he's talking about. We're just two guys drinking bourbon, two veterans, you know, just having fun. And sometimes, you know, it looks up and we could be wrong. Right.

As I said in our pre-conversation, Michael is certainly one of my heroes and I will be forever indebted to him for everything that he's done to help me with my career.

It's kind of amazing. We're sitting here in this room, right? And looking around and I see, you know, there's probably a little bit of controversy in here because it right up top here, it says Elijah Craig, the father of bourbon and people probably would think, Oh, well, that's not true.

But that folklore is part of it though. You know, that's the other thing too is, you know, for a while I call them quote unquote, the truth seekers. There are people too that will, that, I want to pick apart some of the stories to the point. Now, if you're openly fraudulent, that doesn't count. But it's part of the folklore of this business. And I think it's colorful, and I think it's beautiful. And if people are not hanging their hat on it going, absolutely, this is the way it was, it's like the folklore of widow Jane. And we were discussing that earlier. And if you go up there and talk to five different people in the Rosendale area, they're going to give you the same story, but it's going to be a different version. And I think that folklore makes it all richer.

That's part of American spirit, right? Absolutely. That's it, folklore and stuff.

Elijah Craig, that's a perfect example of a folklore, right? I mean, it's beautiful. And how does folklore happen? There's truth in it, right? But there's also just the human condition of translating the story over and over again.

Yeah, right. So, you know, our listeners are across the country. What states are you in? I mean, is it nationwide? Is it mostly focused in the east?

Last count, 37 states. We're certainly on the west coast. We are, you know, off the top of my head. Can I tell you those? That's the lovely thing about what I do. I get to do it. And I think our sales team and our advocacy team all the time is like, if you guys don't do what you do, I don't get to do what I do. And thank God you're so good at what you do.

So 37 states.

So 37 states. We're in Australia, Canada, and I believe in several European states. I won't put a number on that, but the countries, those aren't states.

So our listeners in Australia, Jacob Bell, he could pick him up, bottle this Widow Jane.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, 37 states, that's roughly three quarters. I'm not going to do the math here. So about three quarters of the nation can reach out on the shelf and grab your stuff.

Yes. And of course, we would like to think that we're going to be everywhere as soon as we possibly can. But we grew 42% last year. And my staff, the team at Widow Jane is killing it.

What about military exchanges? They're classic stores and they're liquor stores.

I don't know the answer to that. I'm sorry. I don't. Yeah.

Okay, so some listener out there going to your PX looking for some Widow Jane.

Let us know. Yes, yes. It's Lisa at WidowJane.com. They can send me a note and tell me they found it. I'd be happy to hear from them.

Where can our listeners find you on social media?

Well, oddly enough, I don't use Twitter very often, but because I was a winemaker before I was a distiller, it said always about wine. And I keep telling myself I'm going to get more active with Twitter. Again, I used to be. And Instagram is LBWicker. On Instagram, on Facebook, it's Lisa Roper Wicker. Roper is my maiden name.

And the company website, Widow Jane?

Widow Jane, yeah, widowjane.com.

Widowjane.com, that makes it easy.

Yes, yes. And info at widowjane.com is if anybody's got any questions, Diana and our staff, you know, Diana and Jillian and Michelle, I'll look those all over and, you know, and kind of, you know, get the right person to answer the right questions on those. But they're always really good about looking at that every single day, so.

So it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. You know what was even better? You sharing your whiskey with us. Those are two fine bottles, let me tell you.

Thank you very much. It's so much fun to have somebody to sit down and drink some whiskey with in the Oscar Getz Museum in the middle of the day for heaven's sake. This is incredible.

Melissa, thank you so much for bringing your whiskey to us and sharing it with us. making automatic friends. I think that's what whiskey is all about, the whiskey culture.

You just have to promise you're going to tag along on a little bit of a mini tour and sit on my front porch and drink some whiskey. We will remember that.

I'd love to sit on your front porch and drink some whiskey. We do appreciate all of our listeners, and we'd like to thank you for taking time out of your day to hang out with us here on the Bourbon Road. We hope you enjoyed today's show, and if so, we would appreciate it if you'd subscribe and rate us a five star with a review on iTunes. Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, at The Bourbon Road. That way you'll be kept in the loop in all the Bourbon Road happenings. You can also visit our website at thebourbonroad.com to read our blog, listen to the show, or reach out to us directly. We always welcome comments or suggestions. And if you have an idea for a particular guest or topic, be sure to let us know. And again, thanks for hanging out with us.